Hey, Im proud that right now Rebecca Solnit is everywhere talking about her new Dispatch Book (which youve gotta get!). Check her out at Flavorwire where the interviewer says (a line I love): Her latest work, Men Explain Things to Me, is a quick shot of Solnit. (Like Jolt Cola!) Here she is discussing the title essay (updated in the book) and how the word mansplaining came about. Tom Flavorwire: What was your experience of seeing how the original article spread and then the way that people were using the term mansplaining? Rebecca Solnit: I had no idea what I was launching, is the very short version. I wrote this, as I say in the afterword to the title essay, at my friend Marina’s instigation. And it felt like it was something worth saying and she was insisting that it needed to be said. But I had no idea how viral it would become. (I do want to add that I do not get credit for the term mansplaining. It was coined by somebody else, but allegedly instigated by the essay, which I’m proud of.) The amazing thing is that the piece has never stopped circulating. Hardly a week has gone by that I haven’t seen it reposted or referenced or linked to or had it come back to me in some way. Clearly I struck a nerve. Actually, I was squeamish about the word mansplaining because I felt like it suggested this inherent flaw of the male of our species rather than saying that some guys do this thing. But a wonderful young academic I was talking to at UC Berkeley a few weeks ago said, “No, no, no. This word is so great because until you can name something, you can’t describe it, you can’t get other people to acknowledge it, you can’t recognize it for yourself.” And she said that the birth of this word allowed women to recognize that they’re not alone, and have some power in being able to name it, being able to snicker about it, being able to recognize that this is a widespread phenomenon... Flavorwire: I wish I could have known the term when I was a female music critic about five to ten years ago. Rebecca Solnit: Well, I think it got invented in 2008 or 2009, and then it was the New York Times word of the year in 2010. And by the time of the Benghazi hearings, mainstream media was using it to talk about what was happening to Hillary Clinton. I hope this is not my greatest contribution to human civilization, but I’m really happy to be a part of it. flavorwire/458706/the-tantrum-of-masculinity-rebecca-solnit-on-mansplaining-power-and-her-book-men-explain-things-to-me
Posted on: Thu, 22 May 2014 20:04:15 +0000
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